The Bodleian Library at Oxford has long served as a treasure-house for scholars. In addition to countless books, the Bodleian has a priceless manuscript collection. Illuminated manuscripts present a problem to the curator. Such treasures should be made available to an educated public, but there are problems like maintaining appropriate temperature and humidity levels, as well as a more pedestrian one: the library can display only two manuscript pages at a time, thus keeping dozens of magnificent illustrations hidden. In “Treasures from the Bodleian Library,” the library has created “this lavishly-illustrated series” that offers illustrations from prominent manuscripts with historical and artistic evaluations.

The Douce Apocalypse takes its name not from its thirteenth-century patron, Prince Edward of England (later Edward I), but from its nineteenth-century owner, the London antiquarian Francis Douce, who purchased the manuscript in 1833, the year before his death. His extensive bequest to the Bodleian included this illuminated Apocalypse.

Much of this edition deals with the relationship of this manuscript with contemporary ones in England and France, and Nigel Morgan clearly shows how scholars worked to determine its provenance, date, and other relevant data. The first folio portrays Edward and his wife Eleanor. He wears armor but no crown, so Morgan conjectures that the manuscript was begun while Edward was still a prince and before he left for the crusade in 1270.

Illustrating the Apocalypse appealed to medieval illuminators for the spectacular verbal imagery that virtually translated to the visual. Only psalters outnumbered Apocalypses among illuminated texts, which can be explained (but is not by Morgan) because of the Benedictine requirement of having monks sing the entire Psalter weekly, thus necessitating a psalter in every abbey. The manuscript has a commentary in French (Anglo-Norman) in its first part; the second part has a Latin commentary drawn from a now-unknown scholar named Berengaudus, who wrote no later than the eleventh century.

Morgan discusses the fifteen extant Apocalypses with similarities to Douce and then breaks them into four groups, linking Douce with two others likely produced in Westminster Palace. The manuscript also had links with the Franciscans, since the two murdered and resuscitated witnesses of Apocalypse 11 are portrayed as Franciscans. Furthermore, since the commentary on the biblical books consists of excerpts from Berengaudus, the scribe/illuminator needed a theological advisor to choose the excerpts, and Morgan considers a now-anonymous Franciscan to be a likely choice, an assertion based partly on the Franciscans’ interest in the apocalyptic speculations of the Calabrian abbot Joachim da Fiore (d. 1202). While not pedestrian, the commentary does not advance the interpretation past those of the church fathers of antiquity. Although Morgan finds artistic influence in works produced at Westminster, he mentions no intellectual influence emanating from the palace.

Morgan next offers a brief but well-illustrated introduction to the illustrations, focusing on the influence of French sculpture and painting on English illuminators. Next comes a succinct account of the techniques of illumination, especially gilding and burnishing. Happily, Morgan has included some unfinished illuminations so that the reader can see the processes in action (68, 81).

The introduction to the illuminations is an outline of the entire manuscript and a list of the pictures. The pictures themselves are effectively reproduced. Mostly, the actual drawings appear with a citation from the relevant passage in the Apocalypse and Morgan's explanation of the picture. No picture contains an English translation of the commentary that the prince and his bride would have read, but several pages include the commentary in Latin, reproduced, however, in the original Gothic script. It is a fine, easy-to-read script for those trained in medieval Latin paleography but is otherwise inaccessible. Page 103 includes an incomplete text since the scribe did not get around to drawing a large capital E in front of go.

The pictures reveal an artist who preferred full-length portraits in bright colors but with no perspective in the geographical setting. Although never stilted, the figures are hieratic, as is expected in a royal manuscript. The most startling images are of the many beasts of the Apocalypse, especially the multiheaded ones of chapter 13. All in all, a fine volume.

In St Margaret's Gospel-Book Rebecca Rushforth takes a very different approach from that of Morgan. Instead of focusing upon the art, she focuses upon the patron, situating both Margaret and the book in their historical setting, an approach that will appeal more to the historian than to the art historian, although she does not neglect artistic issues.

Margaret was born circa 1045, the daughter of a German princess named Agatha and Edward the Exile, an Anglo-Saxon prince of the royal house of Essex and thus a distant pretender to the throne, then occupied by Edward the Confessor (1042–66). Resident in Hungary, the Exile and his family returned to England in 1057, but he died within months after his return. His widow and family lived in England until 1068, when the Conqueror generously gave them leave to depart, even though Anglo-Saxon royal blood flowed in their veins. They went to Scotland and were welcomed by the widowed king Malcolm III. The pious Margaret chose the convent, but Malcolm intervened with her mother, who arranged for Margaret to marry Malcolm. They had eight children, and three of their sons became kings of Scotland. Malcolm and their oldest son Edward died in battle against the English in 1093; the queen died three days later.

Famous for her care for the poor, especially orphans, Margaret enjoyed a wide reputation for sanctity. After her death, Turgot, an Englishman, prior of Durham and Margaret's sometime confessor, composed her vita; he completed the work around 1080. Rushforth characterizes the work as a “mirror for princesses,” that is, a guide as to how royal and noble women should act. Surprisingly for eleventh-century hagiography, the vita contains only one miracle, an account of a servant dropping Margaret's Gospel book into a river, only to have someone else discover it days later, completely unharmed. This is a topos widely used in Irish and Anglo-Saxon hagiography and thus has no historical value. But the vita and the popular veneration of Margaret caused Pope Innocent IV to canonize her in 1251.

Although Margaret had no expectation of returning to England, her first four sons by Malcolm significantly all had English names (Edward, Edmund, Ethelred, Edgar), suggesting that she did not wish to give up completely her family's possible claim to the English throne. Rushforth logically suggests that Marget's political interests provided an opening for English influence at the Scottish court.

The exact origins of the miraculously preserved Gospel book are uncertain. Rushforth concedes that Margaret could have commissioned it, bought it secondhand, or received it as a present. But it definitely dates to the middle of the eleventh century, and it definitely came from England (as part of Margaret's introduction of English culture to the Scottish court?). Indeed, Turgot's mention of the river accident provides the only proof of the book's presence in Scotland.

The “Gospel-book” is not exactly that; rather, it contains excerpts from the Gospels, a common practice of the day. The book is small in both contents and size. It contains only five quires, four of eight leaves and one of six leaves, although two more leaves were added on later. The book measures 17 by 11.5 centimeters, making it easy to hold and read, although the pages show evidence of having been trimmed at one point. The script is English Caroline Minuscule of the later period, strong proof of English provenance, and the illustrations reflect Anglo-Saxon models. Turgot calls this the queen's favorite book, so Margaret clearly emphasized her English blood.

Rushforth's account of the making of a manuscript may seem superfluous, but it introduces the student to understand the composition process. Furthermore, she regularly associates Margaret's manuscript with other books of the period so the reader can understand its significance. Throughout, the reproductions are of the highest quality.

The book finishes with an account of Margaret's descendants and the fate of her books, particularly the Gospel book, which was owned by, inter alios, the famous collector John Stow, a parson's daughter named Catherine Fane, and, in 1887, the Bodleian Library, which did not consider its new purchase (for £6.00) particularly valuable. One wishes that Rushforth had told us more about Lucy Hill, a twenty-two-year-old devotee of women's history, who in 1887 correctly identified this now priceless treasure. As with Morgan's volume, Rushforth's is well done and, given the quality of the reproductions, reasonably priced.